


Blissful Blossoms

by Sandel



Series: The 'Well Enough' 'Verse [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:25:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2057283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandel/pseuds/Sandel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>Hannah always buys flowers after fighting with her husband.</p>
  <p>---</p>
  <p>Written for Cissaflake's <span class="u">The Ultimate One Shot Challenge</span> over at fanfiction.net.</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	Blissful Blossoms

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  Banner by easterlies at The Dark Arts forums.
> 
>   
> This is a rewritten version of a story I wrote for a challenge at FF.net a while back. The task was to write a romance one shot for a pairing chosen from a list. I choose Neville/Hannah and the additional prompts "Cruel words", "Flowers", "Serenity" and "'Well... There is one thing...'". 

Hannah Longbottom was buying flowers. That's what she always did after fighting with her husband.

“Maybe a colour changing dahlia,” the florist, Anise Applegate, suggested. Ms Applegate was a black, statuesque witch who Hannah had come to know quite well through the years.

“I don’t know...” Hannah hesitated into a bouquet of scent-enchanted roses (that she happily would have bought, but cut flowers made Neville sad). “I was thinking something yellow, maybe.”

“Oh! Then you should check out our new Shrinkable Sunflowers,” Ms Applegate announced in an exaggerated vendor voice.

She gestured theatrically at the table where the flowers in question were set out, and then winked at Hannah before she went on:

“They’ve been carefully bred to survive unlimited size changes without wilting, and with proper care they bloom all the year round! In the winter you can have them in a small pot inside and in the summer you can move them out into the garden!”

Hannah winced at the mention of a ‘garden’, and Ms Applegate quickly fell silent. She looked Hannah over, and her smile turned from winsome to sympathetic. After more than five years of Hannah showing up at her shop after quarrels with Neville, Ms Applegate had learned to read her quite well.

“Ah, did I hit a sore spot, there?” she asked in a more solemn tone of voice. “Have you and your husband been fighting about gardens or something?”

“Yeah, actually,” answered Hannah.

She wasn’t surprised that Ms Applegate hit upon the correct guess so quickly. Hannah showing up at the shop usually meant that she and Neville had had a fight, after all.

The first time that Hannah had shopped at Blissful Blossoms had been after her and Neville’s very first row. That was when Tom was still landlord of the Leaky Cauldron and Hannah still lived in that tiny room on the first floor. Neville had talked her into letting him stay the night in her small bed, and Hannah had been too exhausted to argue. He’d promised that he’d be gone as soon as he woke up, but the next morning he’d lazed around, getting in Hannah’s way when she tried to get ready for work. Finally Hannah had snapped, and yelled that “If you won’t let me do my job, you can do it yourself!” Then she had stormed out and spent half an hour pacing up and down Diagon Alley, until Ms Applegate, seeing her pass by her shop for the eleventh time, had invited her in for tea. Once Hannah had calmed down she had decided to give her Herbology-loving boyfriend a plant as a peace offering. By now, it was a tradition.

Back in the now Hannah sighed, and then she started telling Ms Applegate about her latest quarrel with her husband.

“Well... I don’t know if he’s told you, but a while back Neville decided to leave the Aurors and instead become the new Herbology Professor at Hogwarts. And you know, I’m fine with that. I think that’s great for him! He never really liked being an Auror, he just thought it was his duty... and I’m sure he’ll make a wonderful teacher! But still, it’s quite a change, right?”

Ms Applegate hummed her agreement as she rearranged a bouquet of dancing daisies. Hannah went on.

“And then now this morning, completely out of the blue, he said that he’s going to sell his grandmother’s old house! He was all ‘I can’t afford to keep it on a lower salary, and we live at the Cauldron all the time anyway.’ And I said ‘But what about the garden?’ because, you know, I love the garden at the house, and we’ve worked so hard on it... And the knobwanded flobberworm replied ‘Well, there are loads of gardens at Hogwarts.’”

“Oh no!” Ms Applegate interjected.

“Oh yes!” Hannah replied. “As if  _he’s_  the only one who cares about that garden! Well, who does all the de-gnoming when he’s off on duty? I do! Who looked up ways to get rid of a horklump infestation when he was on a secret mission in Brazil? I did! ...and I  _need_  a place to get away – I can’t live my whole life in the middle of London!”

At this point in her rant, Hannah started hyperventilating. Ms Applegate handed her some sort of blue-red flower that hummed soothingly at her until her breath returned to normal. As Hannah calmed down, Ms Applegate disappeared into the back room, presumably to fetch some tea.

“Couldn’t you get a small summer house or something? Something cheaper that still has a garden?” she suggested when she came back.

“Oh. Er...” Hannah couldn’t think of a good reply to that obvious suggestion, so she just sipped from the cup Ms Applegate had handed her. The tea tasted of lavender and chamomile; Ms Applegate made her own teas from dried flowers.

“This is good,” Hannah said, indicating the tea.

Ms Applegate thanked her. Then they sipped in silence for a while, before Hannah added, “The idea of the summer house is good too... How is it that _I_ never see the obvious solutions to our problems, but have to go start a big row instead?”

Ms Applegate smiled at her.

“I’ve found that quarrels aren’t necessarily just about the matter at hand, you know,” she said. “They can be a way to clear the air, or a way to learn to not take each other for granted. Or something else completely. I think it’s different in every relationship.”

As Hannah considered this, her mind wandered to other couples she knew, and their fighting habits:

_Susan and Kate had a huge fight and ‘broke up’ every fourth month or so._

_Ron and Hermione constantly made little jabs at each other, and it was impossible for outsiders to tell if a specific one was meant to truly hurt or just to lovingly tease._

_Ernie and Marie radiated increasingly more passive-aggressive bitterness for months before they solved it with a calm discussion._

_Harry and Ginny never fought in public, but frightening rumours circulated about passionate but infrequent screaming matches._

_Dean and Seamus didn’t talk to each other for days after a disagreement, and then they picked right up like nothing had happened._

_Rolf and Luna never fought, they just made compromises that neither was truly happy with, and lived with them until the hard feelings were forgotten._

Hannah chuckled at her friends’ idiosyncrasies.

“I think you’re right,” she said to Ms Applegate. “Anyway, Anise, what have you been up to lately?”

* * *

Half an hour later Hannah walked back through Diagon Alley. She felt calm, almost serene. Neville was waiting for on the steps of the Leaky Cauldron. Hannah held the flower pot behind her back as she approached him.

Her husband greeted her with the warm smile she loved so much.

“So, are we ready to kiss and make up, or do you have some last words to get in before I most humbly beg your forgiveness for yet again shoving my foot in my mouth?” he asked, laughter twinkling in his eyes.

Hannah smiled back.

“No,” she answered. “Well... there is one thing...”

She took out the pot from behind her back.

“When we get ourselves a summer house, we should bring these Shrinkable Sunflowers there and unshrink them in the garden.”


End file.
